Telephone Network Used To Find Missing Children

Program Has Worked Successfully In State

June 19, 2007|By TRACY GORDON FOX; Courant Staff Writer

COLCHESTER — Connecticut law enforcement authorities are turning to an old technology to help find missing children -- the telephone.

Using a simple program called A Child is Missing, a rapid response telephone system is used to alert residents in a targeted area about a missing child, or an elderly, mentally challenged or disabled person.

Best of all, the program is paid for by federal funding and grants.

Everyone has heard about the Amber Alert system, which distributes bulletins about kidnapped children and their abductors through radio and television broadcasts and on electronic highway signs. But this system targets missing children where there is no definite evidence of an abduction. Police still need the public's help to find the child, even if the case doesn't rise to an all-out Amber Alert.

``This is going to be the 911 for missing children,'' said Leigh Purdum, who works for the program. ``In order to call an Amber Alert, you have to have evidence of a kidnapping. This fills the gap.''

The program is simple: A police officer calls the Florida-based A Child is Missing, which operates 24 hours a day. The officer gives pertinent information about the missing person, including description, clothes worn and the last time and place they were seen. The Child is Missing technician then records an alert message, which is sent to the area where the child was last seen, using a geo-mapping system and satellite imagery program. The call goes to residences with listed telephone numbers.

Up to 1,000 calls can be placed a minute to whatever radius is requested. Recipients of the calls are asked to call police immediately if they have seen the child. People with unlisted telephone numbers or who would prefer their cellphone numbers be used can be placed on the call list by logging onto the website, www.achildismissing.org.

The program was started in 1997 by Sherry Friedlander-Olsen, who noticed that no one across the country was offering a free service to law enforcement to help find missing children. The program began in Florida and has now fanned out to every state except Hawaii. The program has received more than 10,000 calls nationwide, has placed 11 million alert calls and has helped police make 245 recoveries, according to its literature.

Lt. Regina Rush-Kittle, who commands the Colchester barracks, heard about the program a few years ago. She invited a trainer from the program to eastern Connecticut Monday to give a presentation to area police departments and troopers from the region.

Police officers from Groton, Stonington, Norwich, Clinton, Waterford, Middletown and Colchester attended, along with troopers from the three barracks in the eastern district.

``With this resource, we have 1,000 extra eyes and ears to assist us doing our job,'' Rush-Kittle said.

Three towns in Connecticut -- Niantic, Old Saybrook and Derby -- have recovered children or teenagers using the program, but many police officers in Connecticut said they had not heard about it.

In the Niantic case, an 8-year-old boy went missing from his school on Nov. 10. Coincidentally, state Police Sgt. Paul Gately, who was then the resident state trooper, had been to a Connecticut Chiefs of Police meeting the day before and had literature about the program.

``I had the stuff in my car. And the next day, we had a missing 8-year-old,'' Gately said Monday. ``I called the place, and the people were fantastic.'' Within a short time, Gately said, the boy was found when a resident spotted him walking through her backyard.

``To be able to throw out that many phone calls,'' Gately said. ``It got people looking.''